Dumb to be in Love
by YoungMarie
Summary: Derrick and Claire spending a summer together. "He chewed Trident Layers like a fiend, and always tasted the same." Back to school exchange fic for Nikolette.


**A/N: Back to school exchange fic for Nicolette! Woo! I hope you like. POV switches but I think it's pretty clear. **

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><p><strong>Claire Lyons<strong>

"A wise girl kisses but doesn't love, listens but doesn't believe, and leaves before she is left."

I read that quote when I was twelve years old. I had written down the lines, memorized every word, because I had taken it like a piece of magic wisdom from the goddess that was Marilyn Monroe. She was a freaking icon, for heaven's sake. I had taken it whole-heartedly.

At the time I was going through my "boys suck" stage, since Danny Robbins had been flirting with me mercilessly, and then went on to ask Massie Block to the Heartthrob dance that took place a week later. I spent a day home sick from school, listening to Britney and Backstreet Boys and all those bands that I don't listen to anymore. I was so angry with him that I vowed not to look his way ever again. I vowed to be more careful.

The next year I was thirteen and was asked out by Cam Fisher. I said yes and we went out for six months. Which is a very long time for a thirteen year old. I was convinced I was going to get married.

He broke up with me because he "found someone else". Which just means that he did a project with Allie-Rose Singer and decided she was cuter than I was.

I stewed for a month.

When I turned fifteen I dated Josh Hotz. Exotic, hot, foreign, and mysterious, he was the sexiest thing in a Yankees hat for the surrounding million miles.

I fell hard.

It was everything he did - the way he drank a strawberry milkshake and the way he dried himself off after getting out of the pool and the fact that he never swore, not once.

I was envied for the next year or so, until I walked into a bedroom at Alicia's sweet sixteen and found him giving her a very special birthday present.

I realized at that point that I was pretty much done trying.

A year later I was facing my last summer until senior year. I was seventeen years old.

And Derrick Harrington moved to town and changed everything.

_A wise girl._

**Derrick Harrington**

She was the first person I saw when I got out of my parents' car. Her tank top was blue, her shorts tiny and denim, bare feet with polish a pink color that matched her lips.

It took about one second for me to completely forget my game plan I had in store, which was a hunger strike and locking myself in my room as punishment to my parents for forcing me to move with them right before my senior year. Who does that?

And then I saw her and all I could think about was how blonde her hair was, how her lips were slightly parted.

"Hey," I yelled casually from my driveway to hers. Our houses weren't mile apart like everyone else's in Westchester, but typical suburban houses. I was close enough for her to hear me.

"Hey," she answered back and smiled and I realized I was in a little deep. I didn't even know what to talk to her about.

So I went with my gut.

"Wanna hang out? Tonight?" I raised my eyebrows and smiled my best smile. She smiled back and licked her lips, her toes scratching the back of the calf of the other leg. I was quite obviously staring and couldn't seem to stop.

"Sure. I work 'til eight, but we can hang after."

And, as they say, the rest is history.

**Claire Lyons**

I slipped my jeans on and ran to meet him in rubber flip flops and the same blue tank top. He smiled when he saw me.

I don't know how, but we just started talking and soon we were in my backyard, sitting on my trampoline. He was smiling at me, pressing one of his warm hands to my knee, feeling the frayed denim. I had sewn patches of fabric to the knees a few weeks before, since the holes were getting bad enough for my mother to threaten to throw them. They were my favorites, though, and I was determined to keep them around. His chin was resting on my other knee.

"What did you wanna be when you grew up? When you were little?" We were playing a game where we got to trade questions and answers. You had the choice to ignore one if desired, but it's been kept casual so far. He tapped his chin with a finger, deep in thought.

"A firefighter. Then a police man. Then I had a legitimate dream of the NBA, until I realized that I suck at basketball."

I laughed, stared down at him and his stubble and his eyes. His chin now resting on my knee, eyes meeting mine. Brown eyes that reminded me of a perfectly roasted marshmallow. Crispy and brown on the outside, absolute goo on the inside.

He had a dimple on each cheek, resting on the edges of his lopsided smile, blonde hair that was at the moment just a tad too long.

He then sat silently while he tried to think up his own question.

"What do you hate most about Westchester?" he asks. "Just so, you know, I'm prepared."

I could say a lot of things. I'm afraid I'll scare him with what I say. "The people," I whisper. I have a blush on my cheeks and my voice is shaky, but I'm barely hiding a smile. He bursts out laughing, a deep belly laugh that I can feel against my legs.

"Well thanks for the warning." He smiles again and I'm lost.

_A wise girl._

**Derrick Harrington**

She asks the next question like she isn't sure if it's okay or not. "Why did your parents want you to move?"

I wish I could say something like family, or my dad's job, or something normal like that, but instead I look up at her and say the truth.

"The Presbyterian Hospital in New York. My younger brother has leukemia." Her cheeks turn a lighter pink when I say this and her eyes shine a bit more.

"I'm sorry," she whispers. "That sucks." It's actually nice to hear her say that. Every other person I tell either shuts down and changes the subject or says something like "Keep a positive attitude" or asks about his chances or survival. I always hated every response I got until now. Now it's nice to hear the truth of it.

"Yeah, it does suck." It a nice thing that she isn't afraid to just put it out there. Because I know that in the end this whole thing is just sucky and if anyone wants to say something about God having a reason or defeating this with happy thoughts well they can just shut up. In the end it'll be a doctor with the latest treatment or a lucky break or enough chemo to kill every part of his body just enough to kill the cancer. It won't be God or a miracle.

I'm staring at her jeans, the self-sewn patches on the knees and the frayed bottoms and how they look almost acid-washed. My questions bounces us back from the seriousness that was before.

"How long have you had these jeans?" She laughs when I ask, but purses her lips trying to remember.

"Three years, I think. I think I stopped growing when I was fourteen. . . I remember that it was when I stopped growing taller and I was excited because I wasn't going to grow out of everything anymore."

I look down and frown. "They look to be about a thousand years old, Miss Lyons."

She giggles. I stare into her eyes and even now I can remember that they were such a deep blue it was like my own personal night sky. I wanted to learn every constellation, every story she had to tell.

"I bake," she'd explained when I asked about the sugary-warm smell that seemed to be pressed into her skin. Her palms, which smelled like fresh dough rising. I made them face the sky and them drew a finger from one side to the other.

I traced each line and fingertip, and those palms were the first places that I kissed her.

**Claire Lyons**

If I say that I wasn't terrified, would you believe me?

He was beautiful. He was funny. He told stories that made me cry with laughter and introduced me to his four-year old brother and my heart just melted when I saw him lean in and give the little kid a hug like he was the person who mattered most in the world.

We spent the next month and a half together.

It was, in every way, the greatest summer I ever had. I can still close my eyes and bring back the heat of the sun, the taste of him on my lips. He chewed trident layers like a fiend, and always tasted the same. The tasty twang of my summer, the flavor that still lingers in my memory. Lips like strawberry and a tongue like orange, it was what drove me wild.

Or maybe it was his cherry-red convertible. Driving with the top down, blasting that obnoxious rap music he seemed to love so much, bobbing my head with his hand on my knee. If I had to pick a more perfect moment, it would still be with him.

And yet I couldn't help but forget about my last two disastrous attempts at relationships. How I had been so unbelievably positive that I wouldn't get hurt and yet, once again, I did. How I felt like this time was _different,_ but in the end it wasn't. I wish I could be more positive with Derrick, but in the end, the things that hurt the most are the ones you don't see coming.

I was struck that maturity has nothing to do with it. Sure, I was older, but did that mean anything? When I was six and my dad was thirty-five, he left us. He left me and my mom and Todd, and now he sends money and postcards and pictures of him with some twenty year old bitch. Age has nothing to do with it, because men are jerks.

But Derrick. . . I wanted so bad to believe that we were in this together. That even if it ended, it wouldn't be because he hurt me. I wanted, for one second, to believe that I didn't have to worry any more about getting the short end of the stick.

A full month after we met he was sitting on my porch after I returned from work, a goofy grin on his face and hands behind his back.

"I got you something." And then the blush that filled his cheeks made my stomach turn in ways I never thought it could.

**Derrick Harrington**

I would normally feel incredibly stupid for giving a girl, any girl, a stuffed teddy bear. Really. I would have been horrified a year ago if I knew it was going to come to this.

But when I pull it out from behind my back and she smiles I realize that I've been waiting my whole life to see a girl like Claire smile like that. I realize that I would give her something every single day just for her to throw her arms around my neck and plant a kiss on my cheek. My cheek! As if I hadn't gotten ten times more action from a number of girls in my old town, and a kiss on the cheek from this girl leaves me dizzy and melting, fast and hot.

I realize when she laughs and pulls that bear to her chest that I'm in deep.

Way, way too deep. And I don't really even care.

**Claire Lyons**

I don't cry when I do it.

It was so hard to say those words, _I think we should break up_, but in the end it seemed like a good idea at the time.

I was so done not having any control over certain things in my life, that I just wanted to be able to stop the inevitable heartbreak this boy would bring.

I could control this.

Because I have been fooled enough times to know that love, usually, is a lie. And I was only going to end up humiliated and bitter.

**Derrick Harrington**

It's really hard to remember that she broke up with me when she lives just next door. I keep having to remind myself, because the shock hasn't quite worn off.

She broke up with me.

At the time I was so mindfucked I hadn't even had a response. I wish I had said more than _Why_ now but what else was I supposed to say?

She mentioned seeing me around at school and I realized that she was really doing this.

What had even happened?

**Claire Lyons**

I was miserable. For a week, and a week only.

Derrick called a few times, and every single time his voice cracked on "Hey" and the message was always short. "I just don't get it," heds rasp out and I swear it made my chest hurt every time.

He ended every message with "I love you".

And that's why I'm the one who had to stand outside his house at three in the morning, a fistful of pebbles that were going to go straight into his window.

I was wearing a blue tank top and my old jeans and no shoes.

**Derrick Harrington**

When I go downstairs and out my back door to ask her why in the hell she's throwing rocks at my window, I can see that she's been crying. Her eyes look a little puffy and her cheeks a little red.

"Claire," I say because I don't know what else to say. She just looks at me and then the ground and pulls me into her and presses her face to my chest. She's still teary.

"I'm sorry." She looks up at me and I don't know how to respond. "I'm just scared, because if you hurt me I don't think I'm gonna be able to handle it." Her arms are around my neck and all I see is Claire.

"I won't," I whisper against her forehead and she nods and goes on her tippy toes to kiss me on the lips, full and hard and breathtaking.

**Claire Lyons**

Marilyn Monroe, will all due respect, I'm going to be a dumb girl.

And I don't care.

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><p><strong><em>Reviews are appreciated.<em>**


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